I'd been meaning to start a thread on this car for a while and a struggle to fit a set of GT clocks this weekend gave me something to begin with.

If you've ever been in a Polo Fox from this era you'll know how meagre the standard spec is.

Its pretty basic really, no passenger side light switch, no glove-box lid, no cigar-lighter, no clock, no trip counter, no rev-counter, no fog-lights (front OR REAR!), and maybe VW's most lurid interior with whacky grey, turquoise and pink stripey seats and door panels (although they are pretty comfy).

Anyway I got it to replace a MK2 Polo Breadvan that was stolen and written off which I just adored so for a year or so I've really struggled to warm to it and now I'm really trying to make it more likeable to me. I suppose I could have sold it but I think that would probably be a death sentence for it so on some level I must like

This weekend I thought I'd upgrade the instrument binnacle which in the Fox looks like this

With the speedo on the left. Pretty basic and I like to see a few shiny things to make life better when I'm driving.

SO I bought a set from a Polish GT thats being slowly broken up (hopefully slowly enough to let me get a few upgrade parts)

There is a change in wiring loom during the MK2F's short life that means the nicer clocks have been known to cause issues with a buzzer or siren going off when you plug them in, I think it was part of a system designed to protect the G40 from catastrophic failure but it means that some Polo owners can be a bit phobic of these upgrades.

But personally I've always been inclined towards the hit and hope attitude when these kinds of technicalities arise

In any case I'd read up and there is a mod that can be made to bypass this trifling matter and as I understand it the rule of thumb is that older Polos, up to July 1993, can handle any binnacle, with the issues only affecting late '93 and run-out '94 Polos, which can only handle clocks from that time.

So I was happy to dodge that particular bullet.

Anywho when I swapped out the Fox clocks for the GT clocks I was hoping for it to be a fairly uneventful job BUT unfortunately when I trial fitted the unit

The fuel and coolant gauges on the right hand side were both totally lifeless which was a bit of an issue but as you can tell from the picture it was pretty dark at that stage of the game so I packed in in and went to sleep with fevered dreams of hope that magically everything would be cool when I woke the next day.

I was happy though the clock and rev-counter worked as these were two of the main reasons for the upgrade so I wasn't giving up yet.

Unfortunately 'Christmas morning syndrome' is a policy of wishful thinking triumphing over cold hard, thoughtless last rolo eating brutality and leads invariably to disappointing times.

I'd done some clutching at straws early on that day and some of the more whimsical forum advice went along the lines of taking the car out for a right old thrash with the heater cranked up and perhaps the old solder would warm up and spring into life. Repeating this theory out loud to another adult will result in them speaking to you very slowly and and other things that make it crystal clear they have you marked down as a moron.

So off I went with the heater on max and my right foot turned to heavy. This produced two results:

• 
  

• These gauges were not going to work just because the car was nice and cosy
  

• Some forum advice should be filed under H for hilarious
  

• I had to swap the KPH speedo for my MPH one before I met a Gard
  

Next stop was to try opening up the binnacle to see if there was any kind of glaring error I could fix and put any troubling thoughts of Polish/German spec units having an unsuitable resistance.

One possibility quickly eliminated was that the connector to the back of the unit was loose or dirty, this is quite possible as to connect/disconnect the early prototype ribbon cable to the clock you have to be double jointed and not closely attached to the skin on your wrists.

This was a blow-out.

Although the clocks look quite different to the 80s Polo clocks and indeed to most 80s VW units actually beneath the sheen of 90s facelift sits quite familiar hardware

The speedo is a separate component to the tacho/clock/engine temp/fuel gauge on the right so swapping the speedo around is as easy as 'beating a suspect in cuffs' as Chief Wiggum would say.

The RHS of the binnacle is held in place by 4 screws and so it didn't stand a chance when I put my mind to it.

Taken out of the housing the unit looks like this which looked to me at first like nothing I could work with but I a little research suggested that these two units are actually plug and play and so ignoring the panicky little voice that is usually rabbiting on about cholesterol, savings accounts or some other load of old toot I pressed on.

The key to this is firm and consistent application of pressure around the side of the crescent moon shaped engine temp/fuel gauge unit. This is key and will yield results in much the same way if left to its relentless progress a hydraulic press can be out run but will crush the bejaysus out of your hat.

But once removed you can see how they fit in, there are three plastic supporting legs with four conductive elements, two bringing a signal to the engine temp meter and two for the fuel gauge.

At this stage I thought I'd try the GT fuel gauge in the Fox binnacle which I knew was working

But unfortunately results were mixed with the Temperature showing up but not the Fuel - pnnoying!

So it looked like the meters from the GT unit (which had a 91 date stamp on despite coming from a '93 setup - more on this later) were kippered and I'd have to make this work with the Fox temp & fuel gauges. I quickly came to terms with the fact that I'd continue with fuel measured in obsolete gallons rather than litres like the rest of the world but talis vita est as my Latin Master used to say.

So I swapped over the Fox clocks to the GT unit and stuck it into the dash knowing the unit worked and hoping this was the end of my odyssey

Now this might not look super encouraging but the needle did creep ever so slightly off the stay and after about five minutes the temperature meter was fine and dandy.

So I figured that this was an case of dusty/rusty contacts, and anyway that was the last card to play.

Out of the car again and out of the unit the back of the clocks looks like this on the face

First you should tug the tacho and the temp/fuel gauges out slowly and firmly before releasing three catches holding the circuit-board in place shown by the blue arrows

and one flat-head screw shown by the orange box

Once you've done that you might want to keep the circuit board loose from the cowling, I used lollipop sticks as I didn't want to use anything conductive or sharp to reduce the risk of chopping something delicate in half.

On the back there are two catches here that need to be released before the circuit board is released, at this point its only fair to say this is a swine of a job and will really demand your full self-control, but again its a question of consistent gentle pressure. On mine it was clear someone had been there before me if the scratches on the clip housing are anything to go by.

One released you will have exposed the back of the circuit board and you can see where the metal contact rods from the tachometer and the fuel/engine heat combo units sit, but just in case I made highly suggestive diagram because i r 12.

ffnar-ffnar!!

These are pressed metal pinch-clip type things that grab onto the contact rods from the guages and on this one they were pretty dulled and corroded.

These are the ones for the fuel/temp gauges:

and these are the tachometer's

so I used an emery board to expose a nice shiny contact and white-spirit applied with cotton-buds to metal. Just to sure of good contacts I also very gently pinched them with needle-nosed pliers to ensure the sockets had plenty of bite!

Anyway after this I reassembled and slipped it back into the Polo to see if this cured the fuel gauge action

Very happy about this

I also flipped the Polaroid screen on the LCD clock (partly to minimise the effect of the LCD bleed) which is an ace little mod, looks way more contemporary and matches the dials much better.

I like the detail! most people would just say "Fitted some gt clocks, didnt work but i fixed them"

The flipped lcd clock is good, not seen that before! easy to do?

Also put up some pics of the car!

Edited 23 October, 201312 yr by JordonVW

I like the detail! most people would just say "Fitted some gt clocks, didnt work but i fixed them"

The flipped lcd clock is good, not seen that before! easy to do?

Also put up some pics of the car!

Thanks man, I'll try to put a guide up on the LCD mod, I did mine to distract from some slight LCD bleed but I think it looks better anyway, not as hard as you might think!

I've had a few Polos now, all MK2s so the older design, and they all had a rear fog-light except this oneand it got me thinking.

I was pretty surprised by this but there's no switch on the dashboard, no loom or sockets hidden behind the blanking plate and no bulb or plug in the tail light unit. Shocker!

But then I never had a Polo Fox before and they're known to be substantially de-specced even compared to other base model VWs of the time when VAG were known for being stingey with standard kit.

Fitted fog lights is one of the small upgrades I'm working on and from here and there I've managed to accumulate this motley crew of lamps

The fitting of these has been made a bit trickier because there is no existing loom so its more that a simple plug play and away situation. I'll be using a wiring guide from clubpolo and I'm in the last stages of acquiring a front loom for the fogs which at least will make it a little easier (this statement is not legally binding and may not prevent the use of strong language in the future).

Anyway keen tinkerers will have spotted that one of the fog lamps has a broken mounting bracket so while I work out how to fix the dog's dinner made by a previous owner

It looks like an attempt was made to pack the underneath of the sheared off bracket with filler/wob/hubba-bubba and then a soldering was used to try to 'wield' the two bits together.

I'll at least have some time to cobble together some kind of 'plan'. I was thinking of using a small L-shaped plate and bolting the lamp to the broken mounting bracket but I'm open to suggestions.

While I was trying to see if there was any part of a fog light loom for the rear lamps (nope) I thought I'd have a look at the sticker inside the hatchback to decode what was ordered when new.

But as you can see at the bottom next to the options tag its nothing but wide open spaces!

Thought I'd put a little post up about the mod of the LCD digital clock I did when I swapped over the instrument binnacle to change from a standard Fox set-up to a GT arrangement.

This can have three main benefits:

1. Reverses the display so you see pale digits on a dark background.
2. Allows you access to the colour filter if you are changing your in-car lighting scheme.
3. If your LCD is beginning to show dead cells rather than it might cure this.

The standard LCD clock can be seen here:

but with this mod they will look like this:

Which looks pretty swish and much more contemporary and matches the other dials quite well (you and I know that one of the main reasons I did it was because LCD was bleeding and this disguises it but that'll be our little secret) can't understand why VW didn't do this from scratch.

You will need:

• Jeweller's screwdrivers both flat-head and Phillips type, it pays to use ones that have a decent grip especially for this job.
• Regular sized Phillips head screwdriver.
• Nail-varnish remover.
• Cotton buds.
• Emery board.
• Masking tape.

First you need to remove the instrument binnacle from the dashboard and remove the right-hand side of the cluster. In GTs & G40s this contains the tachometer, engine coolant & fuel meters, as well as the LED warning lights and the LCD clock.

This is described in one of my posts above so I won't go into any detail about that here.

When you get to this stage you should have the circuit-board with the three dials, LCD clock and row of LEDs exposed

with the white (or more likely sooty white) plastic housing attached to the printed circuit board.

At this stage I removed the tachometer and engine coolant/fuel gauge, you don't have to, but personally I recommend you do as further down the track you will need a very firm grip on the circuit board and if you loose your grip its likely you will clatter these units very hard and this is potentially disastrous. If its the first time they've been removed they may be very firmly in place so the key act is to hold the dial by the side of the unit not the face and using firm and consistent pressure pull them free of the circuit board. They will come away, so don't hit the panic button and try using brute force.

Then you need to undo the copper flat-head screw highlighted in the orange box

Then you need to release three plastic clips holding the white plastic shell to the back of the printed circuit board highlighted by the blue arrows

Here I used lollipop-sticks (but you could matchsticks or similar softish non-conductive items) to essentially prop the circuit board so it doesn't slip back and reset the plastic catches. The next stage is tricky and one of those moments where you will yearn for at least one additional pair of hands so 'mechanising' any part of the process will help.

Then you flip the circuit-board/plastic housing unit over to look at the back and deal with releasing the black socket from the housing. This is honestly the hardest part of the job and once you deal with it the rest of the job is a picnic.

You need to release two plastic spring catches that are part of the black socket that are the last thing holding the white casing to the circuit-board. Sounds simple huh?

WRONG!

If like my unit someone got there before you it may be you encounter a real horror-show of gouges and scratches around the black socket but even so persist. Here I used a pair of my jeweller's flat-head screwdrivers (he'll go mad when he sees they're gone) and slid them down the sides high-lighted by the red arrows

Once you're satisfied that you have released the catches you should be able to slide the black socket through the white casing ang this will release the circuit board from the housing and you should be left with this.

All this so far is essentially the same as if you were working to refresh and repair the connections for the tacho/fuel/engine temp units. But its useful to have this all in one spot and save any errors that might happen when you're combining two sources. I don't repeated anything just for the sake of it but more because multi-tasking (bare in mind I'm probably also drinking a cold cup of coffee whilst all this goes on) is a bit of a dark art to me.

But now you're breaking new ground.

You've now exposed the back of the printed circuit-board with all the resistors, capacitors and sundry magic liquorice allsorts. It looks like this and you're looking for five small Phillips head screws highlighted here by the orange boxes.

They hold the LCD clock to the circuit-board.

Pause a minute and you'll see the light for the LCD clock in the centre of this cluster. Its the same as the bulbs on the top of the instrument binnacle and can be released by twisting counter-clockwise. Good idea to remove it to save it getting a clout and it will give you a chance to clean the contacts using the emery-board, just lightly to ensure the contact remains sound.

Use a small piece of masking-tape to put across the black plastic clock-housing highlighted by the lime box.

The idea of this is that it holds the black plastic clock-housing in place when the five screws are released and it's internal aren't scattered to the four winds. Its not essential because you can (I did) use a stray finger to hold it down but its not just show-boating either, again the more you can mechanise the easier the job becomes.

The five screws pass through the circuit board and hold the black plastic clock-housing to the unit. Because of the way you'll need to hold the circuit-board rather than rest it on any hard surface these screws will put up a bit of a fight. Choose your jeweller's screwdriver well and this will help matters - this is where a decent grip pays off. Resist the temptation to try ragging it, it won't help you and if you round the screws.

When you release the five screws the black plastic clock-housing it is best to lower it gently onto it's face as there are small parts inside.

This is where the masking-tape will allow you to act suavely and make you feel like a real hero

and it looks like this

(apologies as I forgot to take a 'before' shot )

The double-barrelled housing on the left is where the minute and hour adjustment lives.

Turn it onto it's face and the back will look like this

After you have slide out the white plastic frame and pink conductive rubber mat.

The pink conductive rubber mat sits on a level with the double-barrelled hour & minute housing inside the main frame beneath the white plastic frame.

It's job is to send the signals to the LCD display and if it has receded or shifted during it's life that can lead to dead cells within the display, it had on mine with the first set of minute digits decidedly iffy when it was 20 past or 50 something minutes past.

But the good news here is that firm and diligent reassembly should cure this!

Looking back to the black plastic clock-housing you'll be left with this, the grey plastic feet on the right-hand side can be removed and beneath them the two thin minute adjuster barrels can be removed also and stored safely to one side.

Inside the black plastic clock-housing you can see here a stiff colour filter, in this picture it looks grey but it is actually green - its this that colours the LCD display and if you want to update the interior lighting scheme this will be swapped for an alternative colour filter

I've heard of people using sweetie wrappers to change this to another colour but I would rather go to an art shop and buy some acetate as you'll have enough for the lights elsewhere on the binnacle, switches, heater-controls etc and you'll get a more consistent, repeatable result.

Beneath this is the LCD clock display and this is the end of the rainbow in terms of reversing the display from dark on light to light digits on a dark background. It looks like this.

Its a thin plate of glass with LCD contained in the thin channels inside. Sadly mine is bleeding towards the bottom right-hand side corner.

What my camera will never will never show properly is a super-thin Polaroid sheet stuck to the front of the LCD clock display.

As it comes from the factory this Polaroid sheet allows light to pass through the glass clock face around the LCD when it fills the digits to display the time.

But the genius thing about this Polaroid sheet is that if you simply turn it over it will behave in completely the opposite way. All that was dark will become light and all that was light will become dark.

All that is not p-pork is p-pie and all that is not p-pie is p-pork.

When you have the glass LCD screen in your hands you will be able to see the the Polaroid screen is glued to the front of the clock but does not go right to the edge on any side. Here it will really help if you have finger-nails, a thin razor will also work but of course.

You need to run your fingernail (or razor) under one corner gently to lift it away from the LCD screen, this is fiddly but have faith and don't worry about the gunge beneath the Polaroid film or splitting/tearing the Polaroid film, its fairly tough and only the most ham-fisted will damage either the LCD screen or the Polaroid film, but if you are using a razor blade it will need more care.

There are other methods but this is what work for me, once I had lifted one corner I peeled back one of the short sides and then used the stiff green colour filter to slide in between the Polaroid film and the LCD screen. This should work like skin peeling off a carrot.

Now you have the Polaroid film and the LCD screen separated but you will have the remains of the gum on both the Polaroid film and the LCD screen.

Put the Polaroid screen to one side for a moment.

I've heard various methods for cleaning these (including sandpaper and vigorous thumb-action) but for my money those are a load of old pony.

What you need here it cotton ear-buds and nail-varnish remover use the ear buds to apply this to the remains of the glue and a few sweeps shown start to break down the glue and it should begin to ball up like C-3PO's snot-rag and then fall off.

Now you've removed the glue and dried both the LCD screen and the Polaroid film this is where the magic happens

The Polaroid film should now sit with the formerly glued side facing outwards on top of the LCD display. You shouldn't be able to get this wrong because one way the LCD screen will look like a regular blank pale screen and the other it will look dark, mysterious and full of eastern promise.

Before.

After.

The Polaroid film will sit happily and securely in front of the LCD screen without the need for any glue as the LCD clocking is nice and snug and the white plastic frame will sit tight once re-assembled.

Then to reassembly. Its all pretty easy now, but take care young grasshopper not to fall at the first hurdle.

When you put the Polaroid film followed by the LCD clock screen into the black plastic housing the LCD screen must be the right way up but there is an easy visual clue that will keep you on track.

When the LCD screen is the right way up you'll see a faint row of small square contacts at the bottom of the LCD screen

You can see them here at the bottom of the black plastic housing they have to be in the right place because when you replace the pink conductive rubber mat at the bottom of the black plastic housing beneath the white plastic frame these contacts must be at the bottom to receive the electrical signals from the circuit board.

After following these simple steps only the biggest, dirtiest of sticks will allow you to repel the sexual advances of others.

Good luck

Love that write up, top work! LA7U would make this Pearl Grey? One of the best colours Its a 1.3mpi too?

I'm pretty sure all Polos had a fog light since it was the law? Got a pic of the area around the stereo?

Love that write up, top work! LA7U would make this Pearl Grey? One of the best colours Its a 1.3mpi too?

I'm pretty sure all Polos had a fog light since it was the law? Got a pic of the area around the stereo?

Hey man, thanks for that.

Pearl Grey is the choice of the carnoisseur...

This one is a straight-up 1.05 carb model so simple, but slow!

Its an Irish Polo so that might be the reason it doesn't have a fog-light but I sort of doubt it. either way I've NCT'd (Irish MOT) is twice since I bought it and its never come up as it passed both times in different centres with not advisories at all.

But it is weird and it does warrent more investigation, but its raining (did someone say this is supposed to be a 'Mega-Storm' TM) so that will have wait awhile

In the meanwhile I do have so glamorous dashboard shots.

You can see a few of the upgrades from standard Fox spec, I fitted a glove-box lid (leaving that out is unacceptably mean from VW), the GT clocks and replacing the standard FOX three-spoke steering wheel with quite a handsome one from a MK2 Jetta, I got a MK2 Golf GTi wheel but I think this looks like such a subtle upgrade I think I keep it like this for a while.

As well as fitting a vaguely period (and hopefully thief repelling) Sony Minidisc head-unit with a detachable facia. When I bought it the original Blaupunkt cassette was still there but it worked only sporadically.

On the fog-light front theres only a blanking plate where the switch should be (in the handbook the fog-light is highlighted with the number six)

And the handbook also includes some suspicious asterixes whenever they mention fog-lights for the front or rear

Not conclusive evidence but I will investigate further to see whats what.

I realise I should put some photos up of the actual car - seems so obvious now I think about it..

I bought it in August '12 ultimately to replace this 89 Polo C 1.05

Which I brought with me from the UK when I moved to Ireland, an absolute peach but unfortunately it was stolen and written off, not that they got very far as I'd only left the whiff of an olil rag in it but the damage was done.

After that I tried resurrecting this one.

Another MK2 Breadvan C but unfortunately that didn't quite work out as I had planned

and so I bought the '91 MK2F Fox Coupe and here it is when I bought it.

It was a one family from new 32k car that had been passed from an old lady to her grand-daughter when she finished driving who as far as I can tell really never used it.

But for whatever reason, maybe the change from Breadvan to Coupe or the switch from MK2 to MK2F or perhaps the fallout of the loss of the original Breadvan I just really lost my mojo.

For most of the last year its been just a neglected, but always 100% reliable daily but recently I've decided to make more of an effort to enjoy it and tidy it up.

It had a collection of old lady parking dings and had at some point lost it's rear-arch trims. The rear bumper and arch also had the tell-tale signs of a coming together of some kind followed by a well meaning but old-geezery repair.

You can see the rear bumper is riding high and thats because there is a masonary screw in the bumper's horizontal trim line holding it into (the wrong) place.

Whenever the bump happened it also snapped the bumper's mounting brackets so it was never going to sit steady without some kind of bodge.

But recently I was lucky enough to score a replacement MK2F bumper and a set of MK2 Coupe S wheel-arch trims.

Which in this situation are a great upgrade part, nicely tidy up the rear arches, solve the issue of the missing arch-spats and because they're from a MK2 instead of a later MK2F they don't have a chunk missing to fit a rubbing strip into. Thats perfect for this model as the Polo Fox doesn't get a rubbing strip.

I got the front arch trims from the old MK2 Coupe S but...

...as you can see I haven't got the bottle to cut them to fit round to fitting them yet. Because they're from the MK2 they're shaped to follow the arch all the way around and continue across the front valance. I'm always a little antsy about modifying something permanently, especially when they're so hard to come by.

The replacement bumper was a good move because obviously with no messing it just replaces the broken one, a really easy job, I was expecting them to be heavier and bulkier and contain some impact absorbing foam, but Polo bumpers of this era are all mouth and no trousers.

Despite this and some pretty dreadful messing touching up

in various spots the body is and was 100% solid, just neglected and tired looking.

Really the only thing that lets it down badly is that the lacquer on the roof is completely shot and has peeled over maybe 70%.

I still haven't fixed this, mainly because I can't work out what to do. I've gone back and forth between having it sprayed and laying some vinyl down.

First off the vinyl choices are interesting although some kind of sticker-bombing option went off the list fairly quickly, I thought they looked fun and I'd like it but I though that the novelty might wear off.

Plain black or maybe graphite seemed more long-term. Price wise I've been quoted €130 for it to be applied or €35/40 just for the vinyl. Clearly the DIY appeals from the point of view of being much cheaper but rather difficult to do single-handed I suspect!

Actually when I was chatting this over with someone recently a respray of just the roof was reckoned to be around €150 which compares pretty well to fitted vinyl at €130 but considering the price I paid for the whole car requires maybe a little more struggle with my sense of self-control.

So right now this is how it sits outside

A jobs done, a few more to do certainly. It is funny how these jobs are, often chances that no one else would notice but when it comes to your own personal mojo with a car thats beside the point.

One of the things I've always disliked about the car are the standard steel wheels, despite being sort of like a lot of wheels that I quite like I just can't get on board with them.

So its road-trip time to pick up some new wheels...

Edited 26 October, 201312 yr by mintifresh

This weekend saw a little road-trip for me and the Polo. I'd lost my heart to a set of wheels and so I hit the road to pick up these

mmm delicious Ally Cats!

Also one of the longer trips I'd made in the Polo from Dublin to Lisburn

Took about 2 hours driving time which was pretty good I thought considering Polo 1 litres really aren't anyone's idea of a ball of fire and I was trying not to push it too hard (more on why later).

These beauties came from GAVIN - a top man, super sound to deal with and his Tornado Red Golf GTD MK2 is one of the smartest delivery cars I've seen.

Got them home and they're exactly what I was looking for, a smart retro alloy wheel that will fit well with the style of the Polo and with a good bit of refurbing to do, and I like a project

Weather since hasn't been great so I've only been able to have a tentative prod with the screwdriver here and there.

Closer inspection shows the paint is pretty tired so should be, ironically, easier to strip than if the paint were in better shape

I've been thinking about what to do paint wise and I'd given some thought to recolouring the black areas in a French blue with the intention being to run a matching blue pin-stripe on the front and rear bumpers, but I'd also being thinking of maybe doing the rims silver -or polishing them if I can- and doing the body of the wheel gold so I was delighted to peel of a little bit of paint to see:

They were at some stage gold anyway, so I guess that settles it!

I'm really looking forward to getting stuck into these, I painted and refurbed steelies before but this will be my first go at alloys so these are ideal for the job. Plenty to do and learn as I go through them.

Maybe I won't be using a paint brush to get the edges nice and straight though...

I'm going to start with one wheel and take it slowly, use it as a learning process and then move through the set one by one.

Unfortunately I was nursing the Polo slightly on the road-trip as I noticed a noise, like a boomy roar, from the back of the car in the last few days.

Naturally I put a lot of effort into ignoring this until I'd gone up to Lisburn to collect my new wheels! Turning up the volume on the stereo helps :P

I reckon thats one or both of the rear wheel bearings on the way out.

Not a job I've handled before so I looking forward to belting my fingers and thumbs thoroughly with a mallet in the next few days.

Annoying but I was on my way to replacing the drum shoes and handbrake cable in the next few weeks so it makes sense to do the two jobs together this week hopefully.

Had a little prod at some of the flakier paint on one of the wheels today and these are the results.

The black paint gave up the fight pretty quickly! Under that was silver paint, which may have been over spray that was intended to pick out the edging maybe but there isn't all that much on the silver detailing

But now I'm pretty happy to say that originally these wheels were gold, the lighting doesn't show it well in the photos but its a sort of 'Old Gold' I would guess.

The quality of the gold paint is utterly different from the black, which could easily have been brush painted on, or the silver.

The gold is good quality, nice thin paint. Its gone over now and wouldn't be possible to save (unless I was going VERY ratlook) but is cool to see and encouraging for the work.

All the paint sat on the gold paint lifts off with only light to firm persuasion from my screwdriver, which is how I'm able to expose so much of it - and a good illustration of the value in making sure the surface has a decent 'key' to help it bite a firm grip on the wheel!

I wonder if I can try to use gold for the 'segments' and try to just polish up the silver (might be difficult as there are some dings and heavy scratches there).

I'm fairly certain the 'outlines' of the 'segments' weren't originally painted as

>they don't have much paint of any colour on them

>they seem to have some kind of machining pattern on them (knurling?)

I was originally thinking of doing the whole of the body gold and then going silver for just the rims but maybe I should try to keep the detailing?

I was originally also thinking of a much paler gold than this (original?) paint but maybe I should stick with this particularly as my cars Pearl Grey body is darker?

This is how Skinner4 from clubpolo had his Ally Cats

The pale gold I had in mind might be a little too Jap-Look

Although these are actually on a Porsche 911 :P

But I think it may be a little to glossy and modern a look for these properly retro wheels.

Any thoughts?

After noticing (officially) the noise from the rear wheels on the run up North to collect the Ally-Cats (unofficially read that as no longer thinking it any kind of a master-stroke to ignore it any more) I set about replacing the rear bearings.

I'd no done the job before but, as per usual, decided to have a swing at it myself first.

I'd been meaning to replace the rear drum-shoes and the parking-brake cable so it made sense to do all these at the same time.

One of the nice thing about working on Polos is the way parts can be peanuts, and I'd managed to source two sets of rear-wheel bearings, a pair of brake drum-shoes and a handbrake cable for €50 delivered.

So with a song in my heart and a twinkle in my eye I set about the job while the weather was at least dry if not exactly warm.

I chocked the wheels and freed off the wheel-nuts and then jacked up the rear of the car, and then, as anyone familiar with the VW standard car-jacks of the time would understand, put on a clean pair of trousers and sat silently in a darkened room for a while...

Of the two the passenger side bearing sounded, to my ears, louder than the driver's side so that was the one I started with.

I'd recently noticed there was quite abit of grease sprayed from the hub onto the two rear wheels so I was expecting these bearings to be bone-dry but actually when the brass hub-cap was prised off

But actually there seemed to be a fair bit of grease still there so perhaps that wasn't the reason for the wear and noise.

Granted though it was fairly grubby and no doubt as old as the cart itself but I'd always thought that grease lasts forever, having been told as a kid, that 'during the War the Army buried a load of guns and a Jeep preserved in grease in a woods nearby ready for an invasion' - but then I'm guessing everyone has heard some variation on that old wife's tail.

Once the wheel is off its fairly simple to proceed, prise the brass hub-cap off, pinch straight the split pin and remove that and then you have a 'locking cap' sat on the nut holding the bearing into place which is easy to take off with the split-pin gone.

Then you can remove the 'outer wheel-bearing' quite easily in this case with a screw-driver or other pry of your choice.

And it what is left will look like this.

Then its time to take off the brake-drum and you can work on the 'inner wheel-bearing'.

In my case the brakes were holding onto the brake-drum rather firmly so they didn't exactly drift off!

In the Haynes Bumper Book of Fun its suggested that you slip a screw-driver in through the bolt-holes in the Brake Drum and then back off the self-adjusting mechanism to free the Brake Drum.

That may work with bigger brake-drums but on the Polo's small brake drums it just 'wasn't as advertised in the brouchure'

I worked a screw-driver around the Brake Drum and eased it off that way.

The 'Inner Wheel Bearing' plopped out easily enough then. I couldn't really see any wear on either bearing to speak of but they both seemed to be a little scorched which may explain the roar at any speeds above 30 MPH.

At this point your job is to remove the 'Races' which the Inner and Outer wheel bearings sit on.

I'd never heard the term 'Races' before so I was interested to know what they were. The best way to explain them is they're like a steel washer/spiggot ring with an angled inner face that meets the rollers of the Inner and Outer Wheel Bearings.

They're designed to fit extremely tightly into the Brake-Drum and never ever move again once they're in place.

So in other words they're a definite pain in the swiss-roll to remove.

The Book says use a hydraulic or bench press - I have neither so I went with the third option which is to use a punch or similar implement to batter them out.

This has to be done evenly to avoid it sitting unevenly or damaging the brake-drum which would lead to it fitting 'on the pi$$' or not at all.

I'll be honest with you and tell you that despite wailing on the Brake Drum for sometime I couldn't get them to move even a little so considering they were visually in great shape I left them as they were and reassembled.

Looking to the Driver's side I was surprised to see that the bad side was the one that seemed to be making less noise.

The brake drum came off (with a struggle) but left the Inner Wheel Bearing behind

And they had virtually wielded themselves to the stub-axle and required lashings of Brute Force & Ignorance to remove.

And the rubber washer that sits on the Inner Wheel Bearing to attach it to the Brake Drum have melted and become deformed where it had been mashed into the backplate of the Brake-Drum.

There was some scoring to the Stubb-Axle where the Wheel-Bearing had drifted loose but not enough to make it unstable I reckoned but as they say its always the quiet ones.

I banged the the new bearings in and reassembled the brake-drums.

Happily (very happily as it started to rain with a vengence midway through)there was plenty of life left in the Brake-Shoes so I left them in place, storing the replacement parts for the future. I'll lob those in in the weeks before the next NCT

I'm delighted to say this has entirely cleared the issue and now I don't have to rag the life out of my speakers when I go above 30MPH!

And maybe now I can give the attention to refurbing my new Ally-Cats...

Nice work, I reckon you should colour code the wheel centres to the car and then polish the raised parts/dish

Nice work, I reckon you should colour code the wheel centres to the car and then polish the raised parts/dish

Cheers man, appreciate the mojo-boost as I'm feeling pretty disgruntled over my lack of progress stripping the wheels. I did think today seeing the wheels after todays work that maybe some kind of dark silver, possibly Pearl-Grey might look really good on these so I may be having a re-think on the colour front.

I've been working on the Allycats off and on as I can. Results have been mixed so far, I was able to to flake a good bit of paint off the first wheel I was working on as top two coats weren't holding on too tightly anymore.

The wheels were most recently Black with Silver highlights and before that all over Silver and beneath those it was originally this rather cool looking Old-Gold with Silver/Polished-Alloy highlights which is what I'll try to recreate.

Although the Black and Silver coats came away with so chipping that wasn't going to work for the job as a whole and would probably leave marks if I got down to the metal.

So I went shopping and started working with this:

Which had all the paint-stripping properties of Badger-Jazz, and confirms the maxim "Buy cheap, buy twice."

Not deterred by this (and crucially still put off by the notion of spending €100 plus on having them dipped and soda blasted) I went back to my hilarious local DIY centre and bought this:

I'd heard that Nitromors was a little less caustic than it used to be back in the day, but I lagged on a good thick coat

ANd wrapped it in a bag to keep the lotion moist

I still fpund the results pretty disappointing though and had to scratch pretty hard with a screwdriver to achieve this

Ho-hum indeed. The dip and blast strategy was looking more sound by the second.

I wasn't put off though (should have been) and re-doubled my efforts and switched tack. I re-applied a coat of Nitromors, this time mixed with white spirit and tied using a copper-brush rather than the specially bought for the purpose (but still useless) paint scraper.

RESULT!

Now I might be wanting to make this work and blinding myself to the time-consuming poor results achieved so far so I guess the jury's out until I can confirm this is any good.

It looks good when I cleaned it up

But this is the wheel that has been my "experimental wheel" and the others have not had the top two layers of paint chipped off so its all down to further trial with Wheel #2, with the Nitromors/White-Spirit mix and a new copper-brush.

I used a cheapo toothbrush sized copper-brush on this wheel and its now completely caned and was probably too smaller to be sensibly used - I just had such a cobb-on after the initial failure of the job that I must have used a good deal of 'frenzy power' not sustainable for a longer term job over 3 wheels.

Not sure if I should proceed with this 'special additive mixture' and a new (bigger) brush or just admit that discretion is the better part of valour and pay some geezer to dip and blast them??

I'm completely open to advice on this, I'm beginning to realise why people ask what seem to be large prices for nicely finished alloy-wheels as paying someone to do the job for you really does add up.

It would be easier (but dearer maybe?) but I also think the satisfaction of doing the work is worth something too, just a question of whether the satisfaction is going to be out-weighed by ball-ache on this project?

They do look good stripped though

yeah nitro mods and bbs is a cocktail for hardwork!

Epic write ups

I've done this and was hard work at start, I even bought a blaster but it didn't work very well but I was refurbishing 80s competitives of a rally car bbs style i used a steel brush on a drill attachment can be a bit strong and a smaller copper/ brass one in the little bits plus nitro mores ect, when painting I degreaser them acid etche primer, and or a high build primer will get rid of and imperfections when painting and flat it back with sand paper, it may not be the "way body shop " people do it but it worked and gave a good smooth finish

I've done this and was hard work at start, I even bought a blaster but it didn't work very well but I was refurbishing 80s competitives of a rally car bbs style i used a steel brush on a drill attachment can be a bit strong and a smaller copper/ brass one in the little bits plus nitro mores ect, when painting I degreaser them acid etche primer, and or a high build primer will get rid of and imperfections when painting and flat it back with sand paper, it may not be the "way body shop " people do it but it worked and gave a good smooth finish

I must admit that feeling frustrated I welched out on the home-refurb route, and took them to a soda-blaster last week, which as you can tell from my posts, goes against every fibre of my being as an inveterate cheapskate.

I will still do everything else myself (oh yeah sure you will) but the paint-stripper was making little progress, ho-hum.

Naturally in the months and yeas to come I may tell people I did it all by hand...

Well with the wheels off getting blasted and my attempts to put in the fog-lights and get the back fog-light working going badly wrong I needed a distraction.

So I was delighted to have picked up another piece in the jigsaw for my in car audio.

I'd found that the original dash speakers were beginning to sound their 22 years

Although 3.5" speakers are pretty hard to find these days in the budget end of the market I'd managed to track down these bad-boys from China, sold by a chap from Tyrone on eBay

Which unsurprisingly transformed the sound in the car. Bouyed up by this I pushed on in my search for rear speakers, which for Polo of this age are the now almost unobtainable 4x6".

I couldn't bare the thought of coping up my little Polo's parcel self so I had to work with the original dimensions.

Some well meaning Golf GTi owners advised me that their are some 'very good cheap speakers' available but I took fright at their idea of cheap which was around €70!

So when I saw this cheeky little number:

Well I just couldn't help myself

And check it out, designed and engineered in New Zealand! How often do you see that? €30 delivered to the door is excellent value I reckon and 20% of the cost goes to preserving habit for Hobbits. Which is nice.

More importantly with these chaps in place in the back of the car the sound quality and stregth is really rather good. I like it loud myself, realistically if you're limiting yourself to the sizes used by the factory, 2 x 3" up front and 2 x 6x4 in the back you're never going to loosen anyone's filling but this set-up is pretty good none-the-less.

Now I'm like old audio tech, so I'm running a Sony MiniDisc head-unit

but I also like a lot of music so I found this:

On a local adverts website. Unused and complete, it was bought by some luckless individual once for €199.99 but after some fierce bargaining I relieved a charming Polish gent of it for €25! Oh yeah!

Inside and still wrapped up was all this

Which allows you to use an old-school iPod hands-free, preserving all the functionality and use a backlit remote screen.

I don't really like the newer touch screen iPods so I have these to try

On the right the purple one is a last model iPod the classic with all the video capability and so on but I was rather hoping to get it working with the one on the left which is a super old blue screen 3rd Generation iPod the 'Dock Connector'

With a bit of plumbing in I was able to use part of the infamous 'fog-light loom' that I put into the Polo so fruitlessly last week to power the box of tricks

Using the cigar lighter I plugged it in for a trial go and....

1,2,3 - Disco!

Unfortunately the screen can't be seen, but, after a little charge which is a real chore with these pre-USB iPods, the iPod gave up the goods.

So far I got to this stage and trial fit the display like this

Which happily doesn't foul the ash-tray, which is full of nickels and dimes, and is easy to see at a glance. The plan is for the iPod connector to come through in the cubby next to the CND badge.

I was going to hard wire the unit in but I still haven't found the nerve to chop a hole in the dash for the cigar-lighter so its nice and snug and out of sight giving power to the hands-free set.

It came with a very chi-chi connector that plugged into the FM aerial socket on the head-unit so it gives a very nice interference free signal and strong volume which I felt was being lost somewhat with the previous iTrip wifi set-up I was using which lost a lot of volume and was subject to interference.

Anyway with the light fading depressingly early I decided to call that a win and come back to it again when I could give so thought to where to site the remote control.

The instructions suggest the centre console between the gearbox and hand-brake but that wouldn't work for a Polo as there is bugger-all room there and no surfaces to speak of anyway..

So today I was displaying an uncharacteristic amount of follow-through and diligence and to that end I needed to finish off installing the Harman-Kardon Drive + hands-free kit.

I needed to come up with somewhere to put the control pod, I was happy with the display where it was just above the centre console and delighted that the 8 or 9 year old adhesive sticker supplied with the kit has sealed overnight with a grip like iron!!

While I was daydreaming through a conversation with someone who deserved better treatment than me nodding and looking sympathetic while actively thinking about something else I finally decided on where to put the control unit.

It struck me that as I was not certain to ever discover the pure strength of will necessary to cut a hole in my dashboard to put the cigar-lighter in I would be a right charlie not to put the control unit there.

Keen scholars of VW Polo dashboards will have noticed in the blurry photo above that I had create a raised platform where the cigar-lighter would normally be.

The base of the remote-control was frustratingly a biscuit too wide for the slot available so I needed to raise it so the base would clear.

After an exhaustive search of the materials available I actually used the lid off my disposable salt-mill which I then sprayed black and it actually matches quiet well - only my hair-stylist knows for sure.

It fits quite well but long term I need to find something more secure to mount it to the dashboard as currently its held in place by a ball of plasticine I pinched from next door's one-year-old, I'd feel more guilty but I'm sure he wasn't getting any benefit from eating it, some of his finger-painting is awful.

A quick tidy up and hiding of the iPod and wires and with a new home found for my CND badge and it looks pretty good I think

But form is nothing without function and the real key is that the old iPod is talking to the hands free unit.

This really is excellent! An unexpected benefit of this Harman Kardon Drive + from circa 2006 is that it also charges the iPod Third Generation! Anyone who had one of these knows that while it is the first iPod to have a 'dock connector' and use a USB cable to move music file it will only charge with an Apple Firewire cable. This is a complete pain usually because you often run out of juice and have to use this finnicky Apple only cable.

But clearly Harman Kardon are above such trifling matters.

Out on the road it sounds just ACE! And the FM wiring of the system straight into the Sony Head-Unit seems to give good quality sound with little or no interference and a decent volume, both of which seem to be issues for wireless FM transmitters.